On Friday, March 31, 2017, the Vegas Food Expo will be hosting a very special food tour. We’ll be taking you on a tour of four impressive Las Vegas food and beverage providers so you can meet the owners and get an insider’s understanding of how they operate.

The tour is hosted and guided by Donald Contursi of Lip Smacking Foodie Tours of Las Vegas, who’s known for his popular Afternoon Culinary Adventures.

$25 for all registered buyers attending the Vegas Food Expo.

Here are all of the juicy details:

Friday, March 31st

8:15 am – Registration & Check-in at the Gold Coast Resort and Casino, located at 4000 West Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. Meet on the second floor in front of the Arizona and Nevada Ballrooms. We’ll board the bus and be on our way! Please be on time.

9:00 am– Tour of Desert Meats

Desert Meats & Provisions was founded in 1978 and it was acquired by Sysco Corporation in 2006, operating as its subsidiary since. Under the new name Desert Meats, a Sysco Specialty Meat Company, it is the finest specialty meat distributor in the Las Vegas and southern Nevada food service markets.

The company operates from a 50,000-square-foot, state of the art, daily USDA inspected processing and distribution facility in the heart of Las Vegas.

They distribute more than 2,000 products to a diverse base of customers that includes Las Vegas mega-resorts, hotel-casinos, and most of the fine “white tablecloth” restaurants and Steakhouses in town, now also servicing Arizona and Utah. The company specializes in Portion Controlled Meats and Dry Aged Meats.

See Desert Meats’ state-of-the-art Dry Aging Room; it’s the largest and most modern of its kind in the State of Nevada.

10:30 am – Tour of Get Fresh

Produce was founded in 1990 by Dominic Caldara and John Wise, with two delivery trucks and some rented cooler space. Today, 25 years later, Get Fresh Produce is one of the largest distributors and fresh-cut processors in the region, serving Southern Nevada and the Southwest.

When it started in 1990, the company believed excellent service and high quality was the key to long term relationships. They still do. Get Fresh operates out of a fully-secured 140,000 square foot, SQF Level Certified distribution center, completed in 2008, which inventories and distributes more than 2,500 line items of bulk and fresh cut fruits and vegetables.

Get a good look at one of the nation’s leaders in food sustainability in action.

12:15 pm – Tour of Three Square Food Bank

Three Square is Southern Nevada’s only food bank and the area’s largest hunger-relief organization. They have a lot of mouths to feed. Here are a few facts:

– One in six Southern Nevadans struggles with hunger – that’s more than 305,0001 people in Clark, Lincoln, Nye, and Esmeralda counties, including 126,000 school children.

– Three Square works with a service network of approximately 1,300 community partners including nonprofit and faith-based organizations, schools, government agencies and businesses and distributes approximately 38 million pounds of food and grocery products each year. This is the equivalent of more than 31 million meals.
– About forty percent of Three Square’s food distribution is made up of fresh produce. For every dollar, Three Square can provide three meals. 94 cents of every dollar goes directly to providing food to people in need. Vegas Food Expo is donating all extra food to Three Square and supporting Three Square’s Backpacks for Kids Program.

See how Three Square pulls it off each and every day to benefit the hungry.

1:45 pm – Tour of Tenaya Creek Brewery

Tenaya Creek Brewery originally opened as Tenaya Creek Restaurant & Brewery in November of 1999. Their food menu was fine dining with a great wine list and, of course, the freshly brewed craft beer. After several years of operations, they made a business decision to move forward with our real passion, brewing beer.

In 2008, they ceased kitchen operations and began offering our draft beer around Las Vegas. In 2010, they remodeled and expanded their brewery to keep up with the demand for Tenaya Creek beer in our thirsty desert city. The expansion included a 22 oz. bottling line. In November 2015, Tenaya Creek opened a new location, tripling their brewing capacity and adding a canning line. You can find their beers in Nevada, Southern California, Arizona, Utah, and Canada. They are also supplying Allegiant Airlines with beer for their western flight routes in the United States.

See the whole operation from start to finish.

3:00 pm – You’ll be dropped off back at the Gold Coast Resort and Casino. The Expo will be open another hour.

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To join the tour:

The tour is $25 for all pre-registered buyers. Seating is limited. To RSVP, please reserve your tickets below.